Fossil Sport Smartwatch Review: A Smart Yet Premium Masterpiece

Android Wear OS smartwatches are bit of an underdog when pitted against the Apple Watch. Fossil, the American cult watch company forayed into the smartwatch business pretty late but managed to bring some serious competition to its contemporaries. Fossil Sport, an Android Wear OS-powered smartwatch, is the latest offering from the brand that retails for Rs. 17,995 in India.

Rating:

4.5/5

PROS

Premium Design

Fast And Responsive UI

CONS

Battery Life Could Have Been Better

Is Fossil Sport the smartwatch that you've been looking for? And how does it stack up against the competition? Let's find out in our review.

Design: Doesn’t Lose Its Classic Charm

Fossil's experience in making mechanical watches has really worked out well for its latest offering. It is one of the cleanest-looking smartwatches I have come across in recent times. The outer casing of the watch is made out of a single block of aluminum using CNC, making the smartwatch look like a classic timepiece.

You get three buttons on the right side, out of which, two are single-click buttons. All this is complemented by a rotatable dial, which comes in handy to select various options on the watch face. Unlike most of the smartwatches, there's no additional cut out in the display for the sensors, resulting in a clean and graceful look.

Display

The Fossil Sport flaunts a 43mm circular OLED display that offers great sunlight visibility and helps the watch to save some power. Just like any of the Android Wear OS-powered smartwatches, there is an option to change watch faces. You can download a ton of free and paid watch faces from the Google Play Store.

Changing the watch faces is also easy and intuitive, just press and hold the home screen to select from the list of faces stored on the watch. The display on the Fossil Sport is covered with 2.5D tempered glass, which can protect the smartwatch from accidental drops and scratches. Even after my careful approach, I did notice some minor scratches on the watch face within just 15 days of usage. However, these scratches can be avoided by installing a screen protector.

If you are planning to use the Fossil Sport for a long term, we'd recommend you to install a screen protector on the watch and change it time to time to maintain the pristine condition.

Setting It Up

Setting up the Fossil Sport is a pretty straight forward process. You just need to download the Wear OS app on your smartphone, select start the setup, agree on the terms and conditions, and select the Fossil Sport name on the screen. It takes around 10 minutes to sync into your smartphone and once paired, you will receive calls, notifications, and alerts directly on your smartwatch.

Performance

The Fossil Sport is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 SoC, which is a custom chipset for wearable devices. I didn't notice any sort of lag or stutter while using the smartwatch during my entire time with the product.

One bug that I caught on the Fossil Sport is that there is no option to bring back the watch from the power saving mode to the normal mode without connecting it to the charging cradle. Well, that's a bummer. Though the company claims that pressing the power button will turn off the power saving mode, it did not work in this case. This shouldn't be considered as a huge flaw, as it can be resolved by a small software update.

Though 512MB RAM might feel obsolete in a time where some of the phones offer up to 12GB RAM. However, as Android Wear OS is a highly customized operating system, half a gigabyte of RAM will be more than sufficient to do all the tasks on the Fossil Sport. The watch usually connects to the paired smartphone via Bluetooth, and there is an option to connect it to a Wi-Fi network for app updates and software updates.

Unlike an Android smartphone, the app ecosystem on the Wear OS is still on nescience stage compared to the WatchOS from Apple. You might miss out on some of your favorite apps on the Wear OS Play Store. Though there is an option to receive calls on the smartwatch, you will not be able to hear the caller voice, as it does not have a speaker.

Connectivity And Fitness

Fossil Sport is a blend of a good smartwatch and a great fitness tracker. Thanks to the integration of Google Fit app into the Wear OS, you can track almost any activity from cycling to cardio with a single click.

The smartwatch is also capable of measuring heart rate at a specific time interval and generate a graph that can be used to analyze the health of your heart.

Battery Life

Fossil claims that the smartwatch can last up to 24 hours on a single charge. We managed to push the device to its limits and the watch did stay true to the claimed numbers. Again, the battery life does depend on a lot of factors like the number of notifications, screen on time. Like most of the premium smartwatches, one has to recharge the watch every day, and the Fossil Sport takes around 60 minutes to charge from 0 to 100%.

Verdict

Overall, the Fossil Sport is definitely one of the best looking smartwatches available in India, and it brings along a lot of functionalities. For fashion-conscious people, the Fossil Sport goes great with both formal and casual dressing.

Unlike the Apple Watch, Fossil's offering can be used with either an Android phone or an iPhone. If you are looking for a casual looking smartwatch that works well on Android and iOS devices, then the Fossil Sport might fit your bill.

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